…I always valued my reading as highly as I did my basketball skills. In college and in the N.B.A., I read at every opportunity. When age diminished my basketball skills and I retired, I still had everything I’d learned through reading: knowledge of the world and its history, an aptitude for critical thinking and the ability to write.

Indeed, the dude can write for sure.

Can't resist putting the whole piece in here.

Reading has an urgency for people of color, immigrants and the poor that isn’t there for more privileged groups. For many, reading is a pathway to a better education and therefore a better life, so the stakes are much higher than for those whose pathway to abundant opportunities is already assured. One reason knowledge through reading is more important to people in these groups is because it’s portable. Minorities are always at risk of losing what they’ve built depending on the whims of politics. Despots and zealots and bigots can take away your homes and businesses, but you can start over because you still have your knowledge.

For that reason, I always valued my reading as highly as I did my basketball skills. In college and in the N.B.A., I read at every opportunity. When age diminished my basketball skills and I retired, I still had everything I’d learned through reading: knowledge of the world and its history, an aptitude for critical thinking and the ability to write.

I read a lot of books every year, from history to politics to mysteries to poetry. Here are a few of my favorites from this year.

1) “Charcoal Joe,” by Walter Mosley. Easy Rawlins, one of the few black heroes in contemporary literature, solves mysteries with relentless courage and fierce intelligence.

2) “Between the World and Me,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Coates’s conclusions about racial disparity in America will resonate deeply within the African-American community for years to come.

3) “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration,” by Isabel Wilkerson.

A thoroughly researched, yet at times intimate, history of the Great Migration and the Second Great Migration of African-Americans from the South to the Northeast, West, and Midwest from 1915 to 1970.

4) “Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth,” by Warsan Shire. This collection of poems by Shire, a Kenyan-born Somali poet, offers a harsh indictment of the effects of war and violence against women. How the women learn to live with these tragedies is humbling, infuriating and ultimately inspiring.

5) “The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter,” edited by Robert Kimball. Cole Porter was a genius at writing witty, intelligent, whimsical songs that will remain a part of the American culture for centuries to come. Don’t believe me? Read the lyrics to “Night and Day,” “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” and “I Get a Kick Out of You.”

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient and the N.B.A.’s all-time leading scorer.